


Know No King

by Siamesa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Family, Gen, Loyalty, Podfic Available, Ravens, Sister-Sister Relationship, Wargs, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-02 15:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12729138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siamesa/pseuds/Siamesa
Summary: Lyanna Mormont keeps the ravens.





	Know No King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> Mormonts! This was really fun.

Lyanna kept the ravens.

Maester Alyn was old, and sickly, and there was no telling if the Citadel would send a replacement into the jaws of winter if he passed.  So he sat, huddled in furs and quilting, telling stories to Jora and Ned, and Lyanna kept the ravens.

There were few enough of them.  One for Winterfell; one for the Wall; a few for the keeps and steadings that had sent their men marching off with Mother, with her sisters.  Only one of them could talk; he called for corn when she fed him and a low ragged “faar” when he was cold.  Otherwise he was quite the stupidest of them all, falling off his perch in pursuit of a bit of meat that had fallen behind it.

She had come to know her ravens well, since Mother had gone to war.  Even Alysane had left her.  Fighting the Ironborn.  Fighting the traitor Bolton.

(Hands on her shoulders.  _You are the lady of Bear Island, now._ )

Enemies surrounded them.

She had been with the ravens when the red letters came.  A row of strange birds, one after the other, clicking their beaks and murmuring low in their throats as she read.

_The traitor Robb Stark is dead.  The traitor Dacey Mormont is dead –_

_Lyanna, I pray you do not hear this first from the Boltons, but the king has been grievously slain –_

_Surrender the traitor Maege Mormont –_

_As for your mother, we do not know –_

She put the letters together, all in a crumpled pile, and stared at them, blinking the tears away.  She was a Mormont of Bear Island.  She was a warrior.

She descended the stairs, slowly, and pulled down her axe from where it hung beside the fire.  It was a hatchet, meant for chopping or throwing in Dacey’s hands – Dacey, Dacey was dead – but it was a waraxe in hers.

Dacey had taught her how to hold a mace.  Lyra had taught her how to hold a knife.   It was Jorelle who’d given her the axe, who’d held their hands together and told her how to split an ironborn skull.

(“If he’s kneeling down for her,” Lyra had said, and Jorelle had punched her shoulder, laughing.)

None of the letters had mentioned Lyra, or Jorelle.  They might still be alive.  They might have fought their way out.  She knew her sisters.  She knew they could have made it, could have cut down traitor Freys and traitor Boltons.  That was why Mother was missing, most like.  They’d escaped, and they were coming North and –

And they were dead, lying with Dacey and the King.

“Lady Lyanna.”

Maester Alyn’s voice was weak.  _He doesn’t know,_ thought Lyanna.  _He doesn’t know._  

“Lady Lyanna!”

She hadn’t realized that her eyes were closed.  She opened them to see the gash her axe had made in the old logs of the floor. 

“Oh,” she said, very quietly.

Jora and Ned peered at her around the Maester’s cloak of quilts.

“The King is dead,” said Lyanna.  And she’d meant to say it stoically, fiercely, the way Mother would have, but her hands were trembling.  “Dacey is –”

Ned darted at her, too fast for Alyn to grab.  His dark, curly head collided with her shins, and then he began to wail, high cries splitting the air.  Jora was quick to follow, trying to pull her brother away from Lyanna’s skirts.

“Neddy, Neddy, shh, Neddy -!” She looked up at Lyanna.  “Lya, what – what about grandmother?  And – and Lyra – Lya you’re lying!  Neddy, Lya’s – ”

Maester Alyn stumbled, helpless, on the doorframe. 

Lyanna looked at them all, wild-eyed.  The dying man.  Ned, who hated noise, who knew the fear in her voice but even at two couldn’t seem to understand the words.  Jora, nearly her own age, now as small and scared and shaking as her brother. 

She knelt down, prying Ned’s hands from her skirts, taking them and Jora’s into her own.  “We are Mormonts,” she said, swallowing down the fear.  She held her neck stiff, like Mother did, her chin up, her jaw clenched.  “Our king and kin are dead by treason.  But we are Mormonts.  And we will hold.”

 

* * *

 

Mother had left Alysane as Lady of the Bear Island.  Alysane had left Lyanna, to guard the people and the keep and even her own children.  Alysane had trusted her.

She would be worthy of that trust.

That afternoon, she walked the walls of the keep, checking for loose stones.  She strode through the winter-town, nodding to the old men, as women in ragged skirts fell into line behind her.   The blacksmith had gone to war with mother, and both of his apprentices with Alysane, but his wife knew his craft, and even his old father could carry tongs in his shaking hands.

Lyanna asked them about food.

The storehouses were too empty, and she knew without having to be told that there would be nothing coming from the mainland.  They would need to hunt and peck and gather.

They would need to pray.

Jora was in the godswood, small and silent, looking like half of herself.  Jora was always in the godswood, now.  She stayed curled beneath the heart tree in her furs, and Lyanna had to fetch her every night.

“It will be a long winter, Lya.”

Lyanna glared at her, trying to rub warmth into her hands.  “So you want to freeze to death before it starts?”

Jora shrugged.  “Even the bears don’t have food anymore.  There’s too many of them, and the old men are eating the cubs.”  She shrank further in on herself.

Lyanna’s scowl didn’t ease.  “We’re she-bears.  We’ll eat them right back.”

Jora shook her head, the ice on her lashes like tears.  “She couldn’t.  Lya, she couldn’t!”

_Oh,_ though Lyanna.  She wasn’t sure if Jora meant Dacey, or Mother, or one of her strange waking dreams, but it sent a shudder through her, all the same.

“Jora,” she asked.  “Is Alysane – ”

Jora shook her head.  “Not Mother.  It’s not Mother.”  She’d managed to keep back the tears, but they’d set her to hiccupping.  “Mother is fine, Lya, she has to be.”

Lyanna tugged on their joined hands, pulling her niece to her feet.  “Come on.  I’ll take you to spar.”  With a sudden rush of leadership, she added: “You can even use my axe."

 

* * *

 

Lyanna sat amidst the ravens, and wrote.

Letters to their bannermen, such as they were, such as still lived.  Telling them that House Mormont still flew the direwolf – Lyanna could see it, in fact, gray cloth flapping outside the raven window in a stiff autumn breeze.  They’d had more snow yesterday, and no melts in months.

Maester Alyn had written out a template in his shaking hand.  Lyanna had let him, more out of pity than need.  Old Grayce, who knew numbers but not letters, helped her with the rest, adding and calculating.  How much grain.  How many stomachs to fill.  How long the mushrooms in the caverns would hold out.  Then it would be meat and fish, and then, as the seas froze too deep and the storms and the snowdrifts swallowed their island, nothing at all.  Eating the weevils with the bread, eating the ponies, eating each other, in the stories Lyra had liked to tell.

Lyanna had never known a winter.  But Bear Island had known a thousand.  They had endured.  They would always endure.

She had to believe that.  She had to.

A bedraggled new raven sat calmly for her as she pulled the message out of its pouch.

_King Stannis,_ she read.  _Some Southron king._   He wanted aid.  He wanted the men she didn’t have and the food she couldn’t spare, more like.  Lyanna ground her teeth, scowling, and stomped down the stairs, leaving the ravens quorking in her wake.

“House Mormont!” she called, pausing only a moment to grab for her axe, and stomped her foot for effect.  A few of the village children, resting by the fire after a morning repairing the keep, jumped.  Two rose and bowed; the other three merely waited.

Jora emerged from behind the stairs, Ned in her arms.  Maester Alyn didn’t follow.  His turn for the worse was the only thing keeping Jora inside, caring for him, caring for Ned.  Asking him for stories – not fairy stories, but stories, now, of who he had been.

(“I worry,” he’d told Lyanna, in the low wreck of his voice.  “I worry they’ll send –“ and he’d broken off into a coughing fit.  “Someone who calls them bastards.  Someone who doesn’t understand her fits, what they are – what they truly are.”  And then he’d tried to laugh, a sick, wet sound.  There was dried blood on his lips.  “A man like I was, when I came to your island.”)

Lyanna straightened her spine.

“A King has written us.  A King of the _Seven Kingdoms._   But I know only one king.  Our murdered king.  Our King in the North, whose name is Stark!”  She beat the axe handle against the stone of the hearth.  “Stark! Stark!”

The children took up the cry.  “Stark!  Stark!”

It was Grayce, coming through the archway loaded down with baskets, who began the cry anew.  “Mormont!” she called.  “Mormont and the Bear!”

“Mormont and the Bear!”  The children at the hearth stomped their feet in time with Lyanna’s axe.  Jora held Ned tightly, his face pressed into her shoulder against the noise, but she shook her free fist, a smile wide on her face.  “The Bear!”

“Here we stand!” Lyanna called out.  “Here we stand!”

_Mother.  Here I stand._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Know No King [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13724160) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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